What’s the Difference?

I’ve been bothered by something recently, well, I’ve been bothered by something for awhile actually, but it’s come to the fore recently. And it is, what exactly the difference is between something like the BBC’s Sherlock or Neil Gaiman’s ‘A Study in Emerald‘ and something like this or this.

I started thinking about this more concretely when I began scribbling a story about Don Giovanni and Leporello and I realized that these characters were public domain. There was nothing to stop me from submitting this story to a literary journal, it might even be subversive somehow (I was taking the subtext in the Met’s latest production of the opera and making it text, what else would I be doing?) but I didn’t. I’d undertaken this scribbling as fanfiction. It very clearly occupied that space in my head. The story I was writing wasn’t real fiction.

But what’s the difference?

It doesn’t all have to do with public domain. It doesn’t all have to do with authorial wishes. The recent scuffle over the Watchmen prequels has made that very clear. And as much as I consider Watchmen a sacred text along with the rest of my fellow nerds, I also think sacred texts deserve to be played with. (J. Michael Straczynski made some very intelligent and eloquent points along these lines.)

A lot of our most popular culture at the moment is essentially fan fiction, in its most basic definition, being fan-created stories about already existing narratives. That’s what Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is, that’s what Doctor Who has been ever since Russel T. Davies rebooted it in 2005. I already mentioned Moffat’s take on Sherlock Holmes. That’s almost what the most recent Star Trek movie was, except it was made by Star Wars fans.

So what’s the difference?

I was watching the special features for The Apartment the other day and apparently the inspiration for that movie came when Billy Wilder was watching another film in which the main couple met to have their trysts in some unnamed character’s apartment. Billy Wilder wondered, as he would, what’s the story of the guy who lets people meet up in his home to have sex? So, really, The Apartment is kind of like fanfiction too. I know I get a lot of my ideas for stories because I wondered about that woman who only had one line before she was killed off, or maybe I wondered about the child she was leaving behind.

Stories inspire other stories. Once a narrative is shared with the world it works its way inside people’s hearts and brains. They think about it, and make it their own. I don’t see a difference, except that some people get paid.